Urban Planning

Cities remain the dominant form of civilization in the 21^st century, and they are locations where humanity’s struggle for survival takes place. With more than half of the world’s population now living in cities, they are the world’s engine of growth. As the economist Ed Glaeser puts it, “we are an urban species,” and there are no signs of any slowdown in the growth of cities. Global cities play an increasingly important role at the global and regional level: From Asia to Africa, from South and North America to Europe, large cities enjoy significant competitive advantages and serve as primary nodes in the globalized economic system. They interact with states and other international actors, pursue objectives that are often intertwined with global economic agendas, and are crucial to questions related to climate change, mobility and migration, technological innovation, economic development and infrastructure.

But what makes cities so incredibly important is not just population or economics stats. Cities are humanity’s most realistic hope for future democracy to thrive, from the grassroots to the global. Cities are places where people can see opportunities for a better and more prosperous life, but also dramatically display the challenges posed by social inequalities and exclusion.

This subject inquires: why do governments plan for cities and regions? What is the role of the private sector and civil society (individuals and community organizations) in planning? What kind of issues does planning respond to and what are the concepts, strategies, tools, and ethics involved in that planning response? Why do planning decisions make some people so angry? In short, why does planning matter in cities?

This subject moves from the local scale (neighbourhood planning issues) to the metropolitan (planning issues in my city-region) and international (planning issues in a global context) scales, in order to examine central issues and processes affecting planning systems worldwide, drawing on case studies from Australia, and countries in Asia and Africa. The subject is designed to provide an introductory understanding of key concepts and critical drivers of city development across scales and their relation to planning processes and outcomes.

View detailed information in the Handbook

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are increasingly important tools for understanding the spatial dimensions of cities and landscapes. This subject provides an introductory foundation in GIS for undergraduate students, focusing on building spatial literacy and developing practical skills in mapping and basic spatial analysis. Students will learn how to work with different types of spatial data, apply fundamental GIS operations, and produce clear and effective maps to support urban and landscape design.

Through lectures and hands-on labs, students will be introduced to essential GIS concepts, data types, coordinate systems, and cartographic design principles. Practical topics include data management, thematic mapping, and introductory spatial analysis. By the end of the subject, students will be able to confidently interpret, visualise, and communicate spatial information using GIS, and understand how geospatial evidence can inform decision-making in planning and landscape architecture. The emphasis is on building core competency and applied skills that prepare students for more advanced studies at the postgraduate level, as well as for use in studio projects and professional practice.

View detailed information in the Handbook

Urban Design introduces the visual, spatial, social and design dimensions in planning for public spaces. Urban Design for People and Places examines how a city’s built form, function and structure is shaped by its interaction with multidimensional forces – including the physical, technological, cultural, social, economic, and environmental –to create a public life which continuously shapes and is shaped by both people’s activities and the places they inhabit. Explicit in this examination is the need for collaboration and cooperation, to critically explore a broad range of concepts, theories, principles, and processes to frame the urban design practice – developing, proposing and negotiating creative urban design solutions in individuals and in teams, to address urban issues in a dynamic setting. Students are expected to demonstrate team-based learning.

Prescribed software programs with a cost
Sketchup
Prescribed software tools
Image editing software (e.g. Affinity Photo)
Vector editing software (e.g. Affinity Designer)
Layout software (e.g. Affinity Publisher)

Details of software availability and pricing are captured at https://edsc.unimelb.edu.au/student-experience/it-support

View detailed information in the Handbook

The focus of this studio is on the development or redevelopment of a precinct-scale site. Students will undertake site investigations and prepare analysis that will lead into developing a vision for the precinct and a related urban design and planning framework. The future imagining of the precinct will be completed with the preparation of concept designs of the precinct.

This studio will have an emphasis on relating the fields of urban design and urban planning. Studios and presentations are carried out in an environment that simulates real-life projects with an emphasis on group collaboration and presentation/communication skills.

The future imagining of the precinct will be completed with the preparation of detailed concept designs of the precint. This studio will have an emphasis on relating the fields of urban design and urban planning.

View detailed information in the Handbook

A key challenge for urban planning is to develop and assess a range of possible future scenarios that can confirm, question, and sometimes challenge ongoing processes and trends. Scenario planning provides planners a framework to make non-emergency decisions more effectively by providing insight into plans, budgets, and forecasts, and painting a clearer picture of key drivers for urban development and growth, and the potential impact of future planning decisions or development problems (e.g., climate change).

In doing so, scenario planning can provide a competitive advantage by enabling planners and decision makers to react quickly and decisively — because a situation has been thought through and actions documented, no one must scramble when during a crisis. Thus, scenario planning aims to define planning’s critical uncertainties and develop plausible scenarios (situations) in order to discuss the impacts and the responses to give for each one of them. If planners are aware of what could happen, they are more likely to deal with what will happen. So, how can planners use scenario planning to help to make planning decisions agile and able to adapt to multiple eventualities?

This subject uses a range of publicly available, quantitative and qualitative data, along with key policy documents, to analyse selected current processes and trends in urban areas. These trends and issues are used as a basis to generate goals and assess a range policy for managing urban processes and ongoing change under different scenarios. Students will critically examine existing policy, alongside their assessment of key trends, as a basis for developing and justifying new policy options. More importantly, students will learn about scenario planning as a disciplined method for imagining possible futures that planning applies to a great range of urban issues.

View detailed information in the Handbook

Successful urban planning depends upon the comprehensive understanding of the social dimension of urban places. This subject provides theoretical and applied instruction in how to design and critique social research related to urban planning and development. The workshop will integrate ethics, theory, principles of research and methods with applied planning examples, giving students an opportunity to explore research foundations in a practice-relevant learning environment. Students will develop the necessary skills to identify, design, and execute an urban planning research project.

View detailed information in the Handbook